


Don't Say His Name

by ChancellorGriffin



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Long-Simmering Resentment Erupts Into Sexytimes, Rough Sex, Sexual Content, Shameless Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-12
Updated: 2015-05-12
Packaged: 2018-03-30 06:50:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3926998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChancellorGriffin/pseuds/ChancellorGriffin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is a truth universally acknowledged that all the best smut begins with a dramatic mine collapse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Say His Name

**Author's Note:**

> This was a fic request from a Tumblr follower who wanted a Kabby fic involving either jealous Marcus or jealous Abby. VOILA. Canon-ish, but somewhat half-assedly so. Let's not kid ourselves that this one is about plot.

_Leg._

She came back to consciousness slowly.

One word at a time was all she could manage. First, it was “Leg.” That was all. Why? What did it mean? She didn’t know. But it kept pushing at her, shouting, insistent, inside her mind.

_Leg._

_Leg._

_Leg._

And then her eyes flew open, the thick dull haze of shock around her began to fade, and she remembered what “leg” meant as a lightning bolt of pain shot through her. Something was wrong with her right leg. She could not move it. She did not know why.

“Abby!”

A voice.

She knew that voice.

Why did she know that voice? What was an Abby? Where was she?

“Abby, where are you? I can’t see you!”

“Leg,” she said, since at the moment it was the only word she knew. She did not recognize the sound as it came out of her throat. It was musty and hoarse and more coughing than words, but it was enough.  The voice understood her.

“Abby?” it said again, louder this time, as though it were closer than before. Then the voice became a dull, rumbling roar – _someone is moving rocks,_ said the far dim corner of her mind that was slowly beginning to wake up again.  Then she realized that she could not only hear the rumbling, she could feel it.  It was happening to her body somehow.

Someone was moving rocks off of her body.  She was buried beneath them.

Why was she buried beneath them?

Where was she?

The voice was closer now, still saying "Abby" over and over again, and suddenly it became a dark blur in her peripheral vision, which resolved itself into a face.  A battered, dirty face streaked with blood.  The face of Marcus Kane, who was marvelously, miraculously still alive.

And then she remembered.

_“ . . . a disused mine entrance less than a day’s walk from here.”_

_“ . . . in an avalanche zone, so the Reapers never go there. They’re afraid of the rockslides.”_

_“ . . . a way into Mount Weather that nobody will be watching.”_

The Reapers hadn’t been wrong.

 “Marcus!” she cried out as everything came rushing back to her.

“Hang on,” he said, “it’s your leg. It's stuck, I think.  Hang on, Abby, I’m right here.  You're okay.”

Then light flooded her vision - Marcus’ pack had survived the rockslide, Marcus had his lantern – and she closed her eyes, squinting, until her eyes could adjust. She felt woolly-headed and dizzy, and as he scraped and shoved and heaved to push the last boulder off her, she cried out with pain.

"Almost there," he said.  Then there was one large, dull crash, and the weight was lifted, and she was free.  "I've got you," he said, as one arm went around her back and the other slipped beneath her knees so he could lift her.  She cried out in pain as he touched her leg.  "I've got you," he said again.  "You're okay.  We're okay."

Then the hot arrow of pain shot through her leg once more, and the last thing she remembered was the feeling of Marcus cradling her with effortless ease in his powerful arms.

Then everything went dark again.

*  *  *

She did not know how long she slept.  Minutes?  Hours?  Days?  Consciousness faded back to her slowly.  She was, once more, aware first of the pain in her leg.  Then other sensations faded back in.  There was fabric beneath her.  There was movement nearby.  There was light.  She opened her eyes and looked around, shaking the last of the fog out of her brain.

Marcus was standing just a few feet away, rummaging through his pack.  She was lying on a bedroll, with his jacket rolled up beneath her head, under a massive outcropping in the rock face.  It was like a cave within the cave, one solid unbroken wall of stone, high enough to stand and move around but not much wider than a storage closet.  Well, that was one problem solved, anyhow; even if another rockslide hit them, they were safe - albeit cramped - in here.

The rockslide had sealed off the mine entrance as neatly as if a door had slammed shut, wholly blocking them from leaving the way they had come in.  Even without an injured leg, the two of them together could never have cleared it.  But that wasn't the worst of it, she noticed with a sinking heart.  The tunnel to Mount Weather - the entire reason they had braved the rockslide zone in the first place - was walled off by rocks as well. 

"Well, this is . . . not ideal," she said, struggling to sit up.  He turned at the sound of her voice and was at her side in an instant.

"You're awake," he said, smiling.  "And lucid.  That's good."  Very carefully, he helped her to sit up and moved the rolled-up jacket behind her back so she could lean against the wall more comfortably.

"More or less," she said.  "How long was I out?"

"An hour, maybe two," he said.  She closed her eyes and sighed.  "You know, this could be worse," he pointed out.

"How?"

"Well, we're both alive, for one.  We're safe from another rockslide.  And with both entrances sealed off, at least we know the Reapers can't get in."

"Right, but that means we can't get _out_."

"We have three days' worth of food rations," he said, "and Lincoln will be back with the rest of the scouting party by tomorrow afternoon.  That's at least twelve pairs of hands.  And before you ask," he interrupted her, "yes, I tried the radio.  It got banged up in the rockslide and it's not working."

"So we're stuck here."

"For maybe a day," he said.  "Lincoln will get us out."

"Yeah, and in the meantime, there are kids trapped inside this mountain, and my daughter is out there somewhere and -"

“Abby,” he said, and his voice was kind. “Clarke will be fine. We’ll be out of here soon. There’s nothing you can do for Clarke right now." She struggled to stand up, but the effort to put any weight on her bad leg caused her to fall back to the ground.  He knelt down beside her.  "Try not to move," he said.  "I felt around, I don't think it's broken, but then I'm not the doctor."

"Help me roll it up," she said, gesturing to her throbbing right shin, and he carefully pushed up the cuff of her pants to the knee, baring her leg.  Her fingers poked and prodded mechanically, with the deft surety of years of practice, at the places where the ache was most insistent.  She examined her whole leg from thigh to ankle before finally determining that, against all probability, every bone was intact.

"No," she said.  "Thank God.  Not broken.  Just banged up."  She was so relieved - as was Marcus - that it took both of them a moment to realize the fresh red stains on her hands.

"You're still bleeding," Marcus said in horror, and then she saw it.  The streaks of dried blood at the side of her knee were not from the scrapes and bruises there; they had come from somewhere else.  She closed her eyes and sifted through all the different pain sensations she was feeling - the dull throb of bruised shin and ribcage, the pounding at the back of her head - before the right thread separated itself and she spotted the source of the sharp, shooting agony all up and down her leg.  There was a wicked-looking gouge where she had fallen onto a knife-sharp heap of shale that went all the way from the side of her leg nearly up to her hip.  She could feel the tear in the fabric of her clothing where the rocks had sliced open her skin.

"Water," she said.  "Fast.  And clean fabric.  This is going to get infected.  You're going to have to help me clean and bandage it."

"There's an extra shirt in my bag," he said, pulling it out along with a bottle of water and rushing back over to her.

"Good," she said.  "Okay, take my boots off."  He loosened the laces and slid them off gently, pulling her socks off too, but stared at her without moving when she began to unfasten the buttons of her pants and struggled to try and push them down off her hips.

"You're going to have to help me out of these," she said.

"Help you out of -"

"I have to get these pants off, Marcus.  Here, pull.  Careful."

"You -" he swallowed.  "You need me to undress you?"  His voice was impressively steady and matter-of-fact, but there was something strange inside it.

"I can't clean the wound until I can see it," she said impatiently.  "Help me."  She braced herself with her arms and lifted her hips off the ground so he could slowly, gently pull the fabric away.  She winced a few times; the right thigh of her pants had been shredded to bloody tatters and stuck to the wound a little as he removed it.

"I'm sorry," he said helplessly.

"No, it's okay," she said.  "Thanks.  It's okay."

Once the pants were removed, Abby turned over, lying on her left side so Marcus could examine the wound on her other leg.

"How bad is it?" she said.  "I can't see."

_Red blood.  White skin.  A thin whisper of black cotton._

"Marcus, how bad is it?" she said again, and he snapped back to reality.

"Hard to say," he said, tearing a strip off the shirt he had pulled from his pack, dampening it from the water bottle, and beginning to gently clean away the blood.

It was a long, slow, painful process, but Kane was gentle and deft.  He washed the blood from her skin, carefully cleaned it of dirt and dust and bits of rock, and when he was finished they realized it was much less dire than they had thought.  The wound was only deep in one spot, about six inches below her hip, and the rest was a messy but shallow cut that would heal quickly.  He tore the rest of the shirt into strips and bandaged the wound - trying very hard not to think, as he wound strips of cotton around her well-muscled thigh, of how close his hands were to all kinds of other things.  Then it was done.

She flexed her thigh a little, testing his handiwork.

"Not bad," she said approvingly.  "We'll make a field medic of you yet."

"How do you feel?" he asked.

"About as awful as I probably look," she said, leaning her head back against the wall and closing her eyes.

"Then you're fine," he said, and she could hear the smile in his voice.  "Though, now that you're out of actual danger, I can say that this serves you right for charging into an avalanche zone."

"We had to try," she said.  "We had to try and see if there was a way in."

"I'm not saying we shouldn't have tried," he said, "I'm just saying, in hindsight, we could have thought this through a little better before barreling in."

"In hindsight, I won't disagree with you," she said.  "But trust me, if you had kids, you'd -"

And then she froze, mid-sentence, realizing with dawning horror what she had said, and she felt all the air go out of the room to be replaced by three decades of things they didn't say.  She could feel Marcus grow colder - actually feel it - and she regretted her flippant remark.

"All I meant was - I wasn't saying that you don't care as much, Marcus, I was just saying -"

"You were just pointing out to me that I don't have a child.  You're correct.  I don't have a child."

"It wasn't an insult."

"Right.  Just a reminder.  That I can't possibly know what it's like to care the way you care."

"That's not what I meant," she said.  "I didn't mean that."

"You're Abby Griffin," he said.  "You always say what you mean."

"Marcus -"

"You're a mother," he said. "So you feel things.  I don't feel things.  I'm too cold, is that it?  You've said that to me before.  More than once."

"I just meant -"  She stopped, frustrated.  "I just meant it's different," she said.  "That's all.  We see things differently."

"I don't disagree with you," he said.  "We do see things differently.  We see Clarke differently, for example. I can see things in her that you can't."

"You see things that aren't there," she said.  "Clarke is a child.  They're all children.  And you're treating her like she's a goddamned military strategist."

"Abby, right now, she _is_ our military strategist," he said.  "You don't have to like it.  But that's the reality.  Everyone has accepted it but you.  You look at her and all you see is your little girl.  You can't see who she is now, what she's become.  Has it occurred to you, Abby, that down here, _you're_ the liability?"

"If I'm such a liability," she said, unable to keep the irritated petulance out of her voice, "then why did you come with me?"  He answered with an expansive gesture that took in the blocked entrances, her bandaged bare thigh, and the shredded, bloody pile of fabric scraps on the ground that had once been his extra shirt.  "I would have been fine on my own," she muttered, and it was such a childish thing to say - and so visibly, almost comically untrue - that he laughed out loud in spite of himself.

 "Of course," he said.  "Of course.  You're right.  I'm so sorry.  I forgot who I was dealing with.  You don't need my help.  You don't need anybody.  You had this all handled.  The avalanche was part of your grand master plan.  You're Chancellor Abigail Griffin and the rest of us are just dead weight."

“Oh, go to hell, Kane,” she said wearily.

"It's almost comforting, in a way," he said.  "Here we are in this alien land, our old way of life gone forever, our friends dying all around us, at war for our survival, and yet Abigail Griffin is the same self-righteous, judgmental princess down here, trapped in a rockslide, that she was on the Ark.  That's nice.  Consistency is comforting."

“God, how did you _get_ like this?” she exclaimed irritably. “Were you always this much of a bastard? Was I just that blind? Sometimes I look at you and I just think –“

“What?” he said, and his voice was rough with emotion, and she could not tear herself away from his cold stare. “What do you think?”

She regarded him evenly, and when she finally spoke her voice was soft and dangerous. “I don’t even recognize you anymore,” she said. He turned away, stiffly, and she was startled to see how much that had clearly wounded him.

“Well,” he grumbled under his breath, busying himself with his pack, “that makes two of us.”

“And what the hell is _that_ supposed to mean, exactly?”

“I think you know exactly what it means,” he said.

“Enlighten me.”

“It _means_ ,” he said, whirling around and finally exploding, “that one minute you're sneaking out of your quarters after curfew to come look at the stars with me, and the next minute you're married to Jake _fucking_ Griffin.”

Abby’s whole body went cold, and she felt an ache inside her chest that had nothing to do with her bruised ribcage and everything to do with the venom in Kane’s voice as he spat out her dead husband’s name.

“How long have you been holding onto _that_?” she said softly. Kane didn’t answer. She watched him in silence for a few minutes as he dug through his pack and pulled out a bundle which he unfolded and held out to her.

"There's just the one blanket,” he said tonelessly, offering it to her.

“Take it,” said Abby, “I don’t care,” and he turned away, a hurt look on his face. She regretted it immediately. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll take it. Thank you.”

“You should sleep,” he said.

 "Yes, thank you, Marcus. As the one person in this cave who did in fact go to medical school, I do actually know -"

“I didn’t mean because of your leg,” he said. “I meant so I can get a break from walking on eggshells for five goddamn minutes. Sleep, don’t sleep, I don’t care. Just shut up.  I'm done.”

She took the blanket he handed her and spread it over her bare legs.

"Thank you," she said.  He didn't answer.  She watched him for awhile as he silently ignored her, then tried again.

"Look," she said.  "I didn't mean what you thought I meant.  I wasn't saying it was some kind of character defect.  I wasn't saying it meant that you didn't care about your people.  I know you care.  I just meant that, because I'm a parent, there's a different -"

"Oh my God," he snapped at her, and there was so much fury in his voice that it startled her into very nearly shrinking back against the wall.  (Though, of course, she would never give him that satisfaction.)  "Will you just stop.  Stop bringing it up.  Stop _talking_ about it."

"Abby -"

"God, you just don't _listen_.  You keep _saying_ it, over and over, you keep making it worse, will you just _stop talking for one minute_ so I can get some peace?"

"Wow," she said, folding her arms across her chest and shooting an expression of supreme annoyance in his direction.  "I've seen you in some impressively foul tempers in the past, but this one wins the prize."

"You have that effect on people."

"God, what has gotten _into_ you?" she exclaimed.  "All I was trying to do was explain that I didn't mean it as an insult."

"You sure?" he said.  "It wasn't a subtle way of putting me in my place?"

"What does that even _mean_?"

"I am aware of the fact that I don't have children," he said.  "I am aware of the fact that I am not" - an almost imperceptible falter - "Clarke's father. You don't have to keep telling me things I already know."

"What are you even -"

"One child per family, Ark laws," he said, and he couldn't look at her.  "You had yours with Jake Griffin.  So I don't get one.  _So stop bringing it up."_

The conversational turn baffled her.  "Why do you keep bringing up Jake?" she said.  "What does any of this have to do with Jake?  Why are you acting like this?"

“Because I wasn’t sorry!” he exploded. “All right? Is that what you want to hear?"

"Marcus -"

"I wasn’t sorry," he said again, staring at the stone floor.  "When Jaha asked me what to do, I begged him not to float Jake Griffin, but when he did, I wasn’t sorry. There. Are you happy? Congratulations, you win, you were right, I’m the cold-hearted monster you always secretly thought that I was. You were right about me on the Ark.”

“You told Jaha not to float Jake?” said Abby, in confusion.

“Yes.”

“But you hated him.”

“I didn’t hate him, Abby, I never hated him.”

“You did,” she said. “You voted against the whole Council when they nominated him for Deputy Resource Officer. You said you didn’t want to work with him. That he was untrustworthy. You said it in front of everybody.”

“Yes,” said Marcus, voice cold. “I did say that. I wonder what could _possibly_ have happened to make me uncomfortable at the thought of working side-by-side with Jake Griffin. What _possible_ reason could I have had for not wanting to see him every single damned day?”

And that was the moment that it all clicked into place. 

_"You had yours with Jake Griffin, so I don't get one."_

 His anger had made him careless, and he had exposed something he hadn't meant to. 

“You’re jealous,” she said, eyes widening. “You were then. You still are.”

“Not jealous,” he said. “Just not a glutton for punishment.”

“Oh, this is rich,” she said. “This is just _classic_ Marcus Kane.”

“I don’t want to do this right now, Abby.”

“No, we’re doing this,” she said. “Go on. Get it out of your system. Ask me what you really want to ask me, Marcus. How could I _ever_ have chosen another man over you? Is that it?”

“That’s not fair.”

“It must have been _me_ , right, it must have been _me_ that changed. It couldn’t _possibly_ have been you. It couldn’t _possibly_ be your fault. It couldn’t _possibly_ be because you were choking the life out of me. I couldn’t _breathe_ when you were around. You needed me too much. I was being strangled.”

“Strangled?” he said, with a short, bitter laugh. “That’s a pretty nasty thing to say, even for you.”

“God, you still don’t see it,” she said. “You look at me and you see the starry-eyed girl who was smitten with you, who snuck out of her room at night to kiss you in front of the stars. I thought it was romantic then, how serious you were, how tormented. You were this rigid, dark-eyed boy with this impossible gravity around you, I couldn’t be near you and not get pulled in. I thought you were the sexiest thing I’d ever seen. I thought you were the love of my life. But I was _nineteen,_ Marcus, I was a _child._ I knew _nothing._ I thought a fucked-up, brooding soldier with walls around his heart I could never get past was what I wanted.”

“And then you met Jake, and you realized what you’d been missing,” Marcus said with what was very nearly a sneer, causing a hot anger to boil up inside Abby, who felt her fists clench and her cheeks flush with fury.

“I met Jake and he made me laugh,” she said. “You never made me laugh. You could never just _be_ with me. Everything was so much _work_ with you, everything was so _difficult_. Jake was easy. Effortless. You went away, and I found a man who made me laugh.”

“And did he make you do other things too?” said Kane, regretting the words the second they were out of his mouth. It was so cruel, so beneath him, that even he was startled by it.

"That was low," she said coldly.

"Abby, I -"

“Yes,” she said. “He made me come. That’s what you meant, right? Is that what you wanted to hear? Does that make you feel better in some way?”

“I didn't –“

“Yes, you did. So if that’s what you want to talk about, we can talk about that.” She rose and walked over to him, fueled by anger so powerful she forgot even the pain in her leg, and stood right in front of him. He could not look at her. “You want to ask me about my sex life with my dead husband?” she said. “You really want to be that man, Marcus Kane?”

“I’m not that man,” he said, in almost a whisper.  "Abby, I promise you.  I'm not that man."

“You sure as hell are right now,” she said. “You asked. So I’ll tell you. He made me come. All the time. He made me come so hard I sometimes had to bite the pillow to keep from screaming and waking up Clarke. He made my entire body feel alive. Is that what you wanted? Yes.  I had incredible sex with Jake Griffin.”

“And then you realized he was the one you really loved,” said Marcus, knowing the words were petty but somehow unable to keep them from tumbling out, “and you married him.”

“No, you son of a bitch,” she said, “I found out I was pregnant, and I married him.”

Everything stopped.  For a moment, neither of them moved. Marcus couldn’t quite believe what he had heard. Abby couldn’t quite believe she had said it. They stared at each other as though the slightest movement would set off a land mine between them. After a moment, Marcus tried to reach out for her, but she pulled away.

“God, you’re a bastard,” she said. “I can’t believe you. I’ve known you since I was ten years old, I thought I knew how low you could sink, but just when I think I’ve gotten to the bottom of Marcus Kane, he finds a new way to surprise me.”

“I didn’t know –“

“You didn’t get to know, Marcus, _you’re the one that left._ You left, and I moved on, and I met a good man and we made a baby and everyone had to be an adult whose actions had consequences and deal with that." _  
_

“I didn’t go to the moon, Abby,” he snapped, “I was transferred to Arrow Station. I didn’t want to be that far away from you either. Did you ever think about that?”

“I told you,” she said. “I told you I couldn’t leave. That I had to stay where I was. That if you had to move, I couldn’t come with you. I had to stay and finish my medical training.”

“I never asked you to leave,” he said. “I never asked you to give that up. I didn’t ask you to come with me.”

“Exactly,” she said. “You didn’t ask me to come with you.”

“For God's sake, that’s what this is about?” he exclaimed. “You’re _impossible_. I don’t understand any of this. You didn’t want to leave and you’re angry at me because I didn’t ask you to leave?”

“I’m angry at you because you kissed me and then you disappeared and I didn’t see you again for a year and a half.”

“I was in combat training, I wasn’t playing hard to get with you, Abby,” he said curtly. “You knew where I was, what I was doing. You knew when I was coming home.”

“So then it wasn’t true,” she said, “when they told me you’d been offered the position of permanent overseer on the Prison Station?”

This silenced him a for a moment, and she knew her blow had gone home.

"How -" he began, then stopped.  "Who told you about that?"

“Thelonious told me,” she said. “Funnily enough, because he assumed I already knew.  He assumed, I can't _imagine_ why, that a job posting that would permanently place us on opposite sides of the Ark would be the kind of thing you would discuss with a woman you claimed to care about.  He must not have known you as well as he thought."

"I wasn't going to take it," he said.  "I was never going to take it.  I said I was considering it because that's what you do with a job offer like that.  But I was always going to finish my training and come back to you.  That's why I didn't tell you about it.  You weren't ever supposed to find out."

“What part of that is supposed to be reassuring?”

“I told them not to tell you because I didn’t want you to worry,” he said. “If I came home and took a lower job, just to be near you, I didn’t want you always wondering if I would have regretted it. But clearly that didn’t matter, since by the time I got back you were already in another man’s bed. You were already another man’s wife. Maybe I _should_ have taken that job.”

“Don’t be so dramatic,” she said. “You’d be dead now if you lived on the Prison Station.”

“You’d get over the loss,” he said, “you did the first time,” and that was it.  Abby slapped him so hard she felt the reverberation of the force all the way up from her wrist too her shoulder.

“I am _sick_ of you, Marcus Kane,” she spat at him, as he rubbed at his jaw, trying to ease the ache. She could see her angry red hand print on his skin. “I am sick of your resentment. I am sick of the way you look at me, like you’re constantly waiting for me to do some terrible thing so you can point out what a monstrous hypocrite I am. When the irony is that all the while, you’re an even bigger hypocrite than me. You’re stomping and shouting like I’m some terrible person you can hardly bear to be around, like I’m blind. Like I can’t see _this_.” And before he even knew what was happening, she had unfastened his belt and slipped her hand inside, roughly grasping the cock whose desperate hardness had been visible to her from the moment he bandaged the wound on her thigh. His whole body convulsed at her touch. “Is this what you wanted?” He couldn’t speak. His eyes were closed, his breathing ragged, and she could feel him – astonishingly – swell and grow harder in her hand. She gripped him tightly and stroked. She was not gentle. She had begun with a vast reservoir of fury at him, and she still had a great deal of it left. “Is this what you wanted?” she said again, as she ran her fingernails up and down the shaft, causing him to stagger backward, reaching out behind him for the rock face. She pinned him up against the wall, savoring the look of exquisite agony on his face as her hand continued to torment him. “You bastard,” she whispered. “How dare you. How dare you blame this on me. You don’t think I wanted this? You don’t think I wanted to do this to you, all those years ago? But you left me. You walked away. Whatever we had, you broke it. This has nothing to do with –“

“Don’t say his name,” hissed Marcus, “not while you’re doing that. Don’t touch me there and say another man’s name with your hands on me.”

“Jacob Griffin,” she said, her hand furiously stroking at him, and the dam broke.

“Goddammit, Abby,” he said, and he kissed her.

No. “Kiss” was the wrong word. He devoured her. His mouth seized hers, fierce and hard and angry. One hand slid into her hair, the other gripped her ass and pulled her close to him, and she could no longer deny how wet, how hungry, how desperate she was for him. With a sudden, clenching panic Abby realized she was no longer in control, she had lost any power she might have had. And Marcus knew it too.

“Your turn,” he growled, as he overpowered her completely and pushed her up against the wall, and then his hand appeared out of nowhere inside her underwear and she absolutely lost her mind. One finger inside her, then two, then three. She was gone. She had left her body. The pleasure was too great to bear, and all she could do was writhe against him and cry out his name, over and over and over. The tiny corner of her brain still capable of thought marveled at how he could be so rough and so gentle with her at the same time; as he pressed his body against hers, into the stone rock face, she gasped aloud, and yet he never hurt her. He was hard and hot and forceful and his hands moved to her breasts with a brutal urgency, yet he was effortlessly aware of the need to avoid her injured leg. Nobody had touched Abby Griffin except herself in years, but this wasn’t just pent-up hormones she was feeling. She didn’t just want this. She wanted this with _him_.  With Marcus.  She realized then that she always had.

“You idiot,” she whispered into his ear as his thumb and forefinger found her clit and gently squeezed it, sending shock waves throughout her body. “It was always you. It was always supposed to be you.”

“Don’t say that,” he said, breath hot and damp against her neck as he stroked her. “Don’t say that. Don’t tell me that I wasted eighteen years.”

“You wasted eighteen years,” she said, the ache of mounting orgasm growing unbearable. “I was ready for you. I was yours. I waited. But you didn’t come back for me.”

“How long did you stay angry?”

“What makes you think I ever stopped?”

“But you moved on,” he said, sliding his other hand down to caress her ass, pulling her so close that only the featherlight fabric of her threadbare cotton underwear separated her from the iron-hard cock pressing against her. “You were happy. He made you happy. I never made you happy.”

“You could have,” she said. “You can now.”

And just as she was about to sail over the edge into climax he let go of her suddenly, with a start, as though her touch had burned his skin.

“Say it,” he said. “I don’t want to guess and be wrong. I have to hear you say it.”

She said nothing, but pulled her underwear to the ground and unclasped her bra, letting it fall at her feet, then pressed her naked body against the wall, arms outstretched over her head in a posture of complete submission.

“Say it,” he said again.

“I want you inside me, Marcus Kane,” she said. “Right now.”

And then suddenly, with one shuddering, powerful thrust, he was. He cried out from pleasure at the same moment she did, and for a long time there was nothing but heat and sweat and skin. Everything about Marcus Kane’s body was hard and big, but concealing a hidden tenderness; his strong, callused hands were fierce on her breasts but impossibly delicate when bathing the cut on her thigh, and his arms could pin her against the wall like a captive or cradle her with infinite gentleness. It was the same with his cock inside her. Hard, and heavy, and suffusing her entire body with heat, but somehow still infallibly deft and precise. She came almost immediately, weak-kneed and dizzy, but he kept going. He had begun rough and fast, but she felt him slow down after her first orgasm, felt him pace himself, felt him draw it out and sink into the rhythm of his heartbeat pressed against hers. His hands were everywhere. One of them snaked its way down between their heaving bodies and suddenly his fingertips were caressing and stroking her clit again, as he continued thrusting, and it was too much. She came again, harder this time, collapsing forward against him and burying her face in his chest.

“I didn’t know,” she murmured, voice muffled by skin, more to herself than to him. “I didn’t know it would feel like this.”

“I didn’t know _I_ could feel like this,” Marcus whispered, and as his thrusts began to grow deeper she felt him finally approaching his own climax.

“I want to come with you,” she said. “Touch me again. Make me come with you.” As he slipped his hand back down inside her, and she sighed his name, he moved in to kiss her mouth.

“No,” she said, stopping him, placing her hand on his cheek. “No. Let me watch you.” And as he closed his eyes, pulled her body even closer to his, rose and fell inside her over and over, she watched him, the look of fierce concentration on his face as he approached the brink.

“Look at me,” she said. His eyes opened wide. They were impossibly dark and heavy with desire, and she could hold off no longer against the insistent pressure of his cock and hand, arching her back and breathing in sharply with a gasp as she came a third time. But he was right behind her, and with one final, powerful thrust, he cried out and shuddered to a halt, buried deep inside her.

Neither of them could speak. Neither could move. All was soft breath, damp skin, and utter satisfaction.

“I’ve never –“ he began softly, but she laid a finger over his lip to stop him.

“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t finish that sentence. Because if you say it, I’ll say it back.”

“I’ve never been with anyone and had it feel like that,” he said. “You don’t have to say it back. I don’t want to – I never should have –“ He stopped. “I said awful things to you. I shouldn’t have – He was your husband, he was a good man, I don’t want to be the kind of person who –“

“It's never felt like that for me either,” she said, and it silenced him completely. He swallowed hard.  “I didn’t want you to stop," she went on softly, running a hand through his now-damp hair.  "Half of me wanted you to make me come, over and over again, for the rest of my life, and half of me didn’t want to come at all because I didn’t want it to end. Marcus, there’s nothing you’re feeling right now that I’m not feeling too.”

“I don’t think that’s quite possible,” he said, suddenly unable to look her in the eye.

“Do you want me to say it first, then?” she said. “Do you want me to tell you there’s nothing to be jealous of? Do you want me to tell you that the second we get back to Camp Jaha I want you to pack your bags and move into my quarters so I can have you like this every night? Do you want me to tell you that I spent eighteen years wondering what it would feel like to have you inside me and when I finally did it was so much better than I could ever have imagined that if I hadn’t been in love with you already, I would be after this? Is that what you want to hear?”

He pulled away from her, staring, eyes wide, and it was only then that she fully realized what she’d said.

“Is that true?” he asked uncertainly. “Is any of that true?”  And she kissed him then, instead of answering, her lips soft and insistent against his.  A kiss full of promises, sweet and slow.  And that was how he knew.

"I thought it was too late," he said as she pulled away.  "I gave up.  I gave up so long ago.  I thought anything left between us was over."  She wrapped her arms around him, then, and buried her face in his chest. 

"You idiot," she said.  "I would have waited forever for you."


End file.
